@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

mpjgregoire

@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca

ingénieur, tory canadien, citoyen du Grand Montréal

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wjmaggos, to random
@wjmaggos@liberal.city avatar

thinks this is new. That the government hates straight white cis dudes. That they were at but not in Portland, at protests or doing this for decades now to Muslims. I think the claims can be overblown but it's happening, as we've seen with many terrorism cases. The sad part is each side is mostly fine with government infiltration and fuckery of groups they don't like.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@wjmaggos Agents provocateurs are bad of course, but shouldn't the government have agents within the Proud Boys and Antifa?

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@wjmaggos There are certainly difficulties with the use of undercover government agents, but I didn't think you'd take a position against them in general.

What do you think about police infiltrating the mafia? If someone already within an organisation suggests to the FBI that he could become a paid informant, should they say no?

(Lots of movies have been made about undercover agents because of the tensions of their role. Donnie Brasco comes to mind.)

mike, to random
@mike@thecanadian.social avatar
  1. First batteries for long haul e-trucks weigh about 16,000 lbs. Since trucks are weight regulated this cuts the load sizes considerably. Second charging infrastructure is not yet in place and many areas of the United States do not have a grid that can support local demand little own full scale commercial e-trucking. Third, range is at most 300 miles before a ten hour charge, for most cases this in impractical.
mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@mike @SarraceniaWilds
I don't really know anything about the challenges of commercial trucking switching to electric. Would there be any value for them in using hybrid systems, or hydrogen fuel cells?

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

How do you feel about citizens' assemblies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_assembly?wprov=sfla1

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan Ideally our elections would choose wise, experienced people from a broad range of backgrounds to make decisions for the common good.

Choosing people at random does provide a broad range of background, but results in an assembly no wiser or more knowledgeable than society in general.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@Brendanjones
Let me suggest that in some places there is too much democracy at present: California, for instance, would be better off without citizens' initiatives and if they didn't have elections every two years.

@evan

rolle, (edited ) to fediverse
@rolle@mementomori.social avatar

It feels like people are 50%/50% on the search feature on Mastodon and Fediverse in general. Some Fedi software have quite extensive search implemented already in my knowledge. Mastodon barely has any search if you don't count the open text search patch.

What do you think?

Pick one.

I want to see how divided we are on this.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@gubi @rolle
Yes, I think the best solution would be having making searchable a) hashtags b) full-text of posts if the user has opted in.

If there's no individual user choice, then only the hashtags should be searchable.

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

Growling at my TV: The problem is not loneliness among American young men--and not phones or games. It is racism among them. Let us not invent another trope to avoid talking about the actual pathology in our society.
Next Haass and Goldberg talk about getting people off phones and into houses of worship: the essence of conservative wishful nostalgia that ignores the role of the evangelical church as a major force of the fascism and racism in America today.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@jeffjarvis Are young men in the US more racist than they were (say) twenty-five years ago? If so, then why would that be?

bugaevc, to random
@bugaevc@floss.social avatar

"having started to develop in 1990, the GNU/Hurd has yet to reach version 1.0"

🙄 gosh, there we go again

Should I post a patch to bump the version to 100.0? The version number is indicative of exactly nothing.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@bugaevc If the topic made it to the top of HN, maybe there's some latent interest in the Hurd.

mpjgregoire, to debian
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

I have now installed Emacs 29.1 and , after enabling unstable on my otherwise stable box. Didn't pull in too many dependencies. Will see how it goes.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@timbray For me, the attraction is principally PGTK. I run Emacs on two different computers, so I want to be able to forward the GUI from computer no. 2 preferably without using X.

wjmaggos, to random
@wjmaggos@liberal.city avatar

What's legal in a democracy is that which was indirectly decided to be an acceptable compromise by most of the people, in the limited way that a government can represent that. There is no moral force to it, nor should our representatives be seen as vanguards of our values. If the result is unacceptable to you, use empathy and reason. Educate voters regarding the system, the issues and how many are left behind. The alternative is dissolution or accepting rule by the most forceful minority.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@wjmaggos Catholics believe that the law does have moral force. It is wrong to break the law, though there are situations in which it is more wrong to follow it, in which case it is no longer morally binding.

http://scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c2a2.htm

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@wjmaggos Not just "they", I believe that. As to the Caesars, they had many objections to Christianity, as you will no doubt recall.

At any rate, I bring this up not because I expect the Catechism to convince you, but to point out that many, many people -- and not just Catholics, for that matter -- believe that there is a moral obligation to obey the law of their society.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@MicroWave So the Biden Administration wants to spend $39B? Has Congress approved it?

mike, (edited ) to climate
@mike@thecanadian.social avatar

Ways to fight climate change.

Easy:
Buy less stuff.
Re-use more stuff.
Fix broken stuff.
Burn less stuff.
Eat local stuff.

Feel free to add to the list.

Non ideological answers only.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@mike Accept that nuclear power is better for the environment than fossil fuels.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@anne_twain @PapyrusBrigade @mike
Here in , we're fortunate to have the , corner-shops in mostly residential neighbourhoods.

jfmezei, to random
@jfmezei@mstdn.ca avatar

Trump has motorcade drime from golf course in bedminster all the ya to EWR to board his huge fuel guzling 757 for short hop to Washington to appear in court for a few minutes and then do the reverse. What a huge waste of fuel and generator of CO2 emissions. I guess he is too much of a snob to take the train.

More on that.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@jfmezei Does the Governor-General still have a private rail car? I hope so.

breadandcircuses, to environment

Billionaires should not exist.

It is impossible to earn a billion dollars. Take any exorbitant salary you like — let’s say $500,000 per year — and calculate how many years you would have to work, spending nothing, to earn your first billion. At $500k/year, it would take 2,000 years. Or, if you simply steal $3 from every single American, you can make a billion in a single year.

Billionaires’ wealth comes only from wage theft from workers. It is never earned. It is estimated that ~5% of deaths in the US are attributable to poverty, making every billionaire a de-facto mass murderer. No one becomes a billionaire because they are intelligent or talented; people become billionaires because they are able to rob millions of other people into poverty, destitution, and early death — and still sleep soundly at night.

These are the people determining our future. They are brain-damaged by power. [See https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-causes-brain-damage/528711/] Billionaires are, by definition, psychopaths. They believe they are chosen by the universe to live as gods. If you are counting on billionaires to save the planet because “it’s in their best interest,” you misunderstand their interests.

That's an excerpt from a long and very informative piece by Sam Hall (@SamYourEyes).

FULL ARTICLE -- https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to-the-apocalypse-7790666afde7

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@SamYourEyes @OrionFed @breadandcircuses I've "made money" in a sense by the increased value of my house since I bought it. No, it wasn't wages and I didn't "earn" it. But the increase in value isn't a result of my taking money from anyone else either, fairly or unfairly.

Most of the billionaires on your list became incredibly rich in the same way: not by their wages, not by taking money from employees, but because other people decided they'd happily pay big bucks for shares of AMZN or TSLA.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@SamYourEyes @OrionFed @breadandcircuses That's not to say that the billionaires don't deserve criticism. In many cases, employees have been mistreated, customers taken for a ride, investors lied too, etc. We should call out such practices when they occur. But the fact that their shares are highly valued is not in itself a sin.

petergleick, to random
@petergleick@fediscience.org avatar

Okay....
The guy whose company built the duct tape and chewing gum submersible that imploded over the Titanic wants to build a habitat on Venus, where the surface pressure is 75-100 times higher than on Earth, the temperature is hot enough to melt lead, and the atmosphere is basically sulfuric acid...

Any takers?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/08/01/guillermo-shnlein-oceangate-co-founder-venus-colony-vision/70509578007/

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@petergleick Not really the company I'd trust to set things up properly, but there's a not completely crazy basis to the idea: cloud cities on Venus, e.g. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161019-the-amazing-cloud-cities-we-could-build-on-venus


jfmezei, to random
@jfmezei@mstdn.ca avatar

Mike Pence statement
“Today's indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States"

Quite a reversal from his previous very neutral and somewhat pro Trump attitudes.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@jfmezei May there be many more such reversals.

mpjgregoire, to random
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

Alberta no longer pursuing plan to dump RCMP for provincial police
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/alberta-no-longer-pursuing-plan-to-dump-rcmp-for-provincial-police-force

I live in a province with a provincial police force. It works fine. But the transition difficulties of setting one up for Alberta were obviously a major issue.

Hmm. Is backing away from all hot-button issues, or has she picked just one on which she'll concentrate? It's generally unwise to battle on all fronts all at once.

1/2


mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

(If I were Premier of Alberta, my top priority would be transitioning the provincial budget so that royalties from oil and gas extraction would go into the Heritage Fund, rather than into general revenue. Ms. Smith called for this in a report she wrote a few years before returning to elected politics: https://albertapolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/Danielle-Smith-Challenges-Paper.pdf )

Any speculations, @keithzg ?

2/2

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@keithzg So do you think Premier Smith is likely to concentrate on one controversial initiative, or is she more likely to go with "easy stuff plus low-consequence distractions" as @msh suggests? If she picks one battle, what would it be?

I notice that she's decided to oppose user fees at medical clinics, so not that anyway.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@keithzg @msh
I see a claim in the that the big issue will be an : https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/braid-ucp-alberta-pension-drive-revived

Keith has already explained why he thinks that would be a bad idea. The article adds that it might be unwise for the same reason as the creation of an Alberta Provincial Police force: transition costs.

jcolp, to random

@Milnoc @jfmezei Good news! Tomorrow I will be going past the railway museum.

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@reiver @jcolp @Milnoc @jfmezei There's a good train museum in St-Constant, on the South Shore of : https://exporail.org/

mpjgregoire,
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca avatar

@jfmezei @reiver @jcolp @Milnoc Also they have an old tramway car going around the property in the Summer, taking visitors on rides. And there's the minitrain, a ten minute ride in a figure eight through the woods, great for children. On special occasions retired telegraph operators show up and send telegrams from one end of the lot to another.

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